Winchester well back online as city weighs new water agreement with Scott-Morgan-Greene Water Cooperative

Rosalind Essig, ressig@myjournalcourier.com

Published
4:09 am CST, Wednesday, February 6, 2019

WINCHESTER — The Winchester City Council will consider an agreement with an area water cooperative one day after getting approval to put its second well back online.

One of Winchester’s two wells had been out of action since early January, spurring the city to look at contingency water supplies in case of an emergency, Mayor Rex McIntire said. On Tuesday, he said the city had received word that samples from the well — in need of approval from the Environmental Protection Agency — were approved and the city was given the go-ahead to get the well back up and running.

The city had to spend a little over $29,000 to have a failed water pump cleaned to make the well operational again.

“It put us down to one well. I was very concerned because if the other well or the other pump would have gone down, then we would have been without any source of water,” McIntire said.

At the council’s meeting Wednesday, aldermen will discuss a connection agreement with Scott-Morgan-Greene Water Cooperative that would give Winchester access to the cooperative’s water in case something happens to the city’s wells in the future. McIntire said he also hopes to have estimates of project costs from engineering firm Benton and Associates available for the council to discuss at Wednesday’s meeting.

“One of our city water mains is in pretty close proximity to the rural water — SMG’s (Scott-Morgan-Greene Water Cooperative) rural water. And what we’re talking about doing is running a line between the two, and we’ll put a valve and a meter in there, so if the occasion ever should arise where we would have an emergency where both our pumps would be down, we’d be able to open the valve and feed our system from the SMG side,” McIntire said.

Also on the agenda is discussion of an update on the Open Space Land Acquisition and Development grant for the $670,000 project to maintain and upgrade the community’s pool. Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office announced in a news release Tuesday that Winchester had received the $335,000 grant it had sought for the pool project.

The project is one of 87 to receive some of the $28 million awarded in grants through the program, which is administered through the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

The council will also hear an update on a sidewalk improvement project, funded by a $99,000 Rural Development Grant the city received last year. McIntire said the project is about 25 to 30 percent complete. It includes sidewalk repair and replacement, as well as landscaping and other improvements.